The invention relates to a valve for introducing a guidewire, dilator, or catheter into a vessel of a patient while maintaining a liquid seal at all times.
An introducer valve of the prior art is known in which an O-ring of silicon rubber is enclosed in a housing through which a carrier tube of a catheter is inserted for the purpose of providing a liquid-tight seal. In another known tube connecting introducer valve, there is similarly arranged a radial seal which surrounds an elongated guide element, which is substantially thinner than the carrier tube, for the purpose of providing a pressure-tight seal. Also known, is an introducer valve having several flat sealing elements arranged one behind the other with different sized openings. In this stated arrangement, each sealing element is tailored to a certain diameter such that only one of these surrounding elements seals the elongated element which is inserted through the valve.
In practice, these valves often prove not to be liquid-tight. These prior art sealing elements also demand a high level of precision to fabricate and assemble and therefore are relatively expensive to manufacture.